


beneath the depths

by mouserat



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Jones Brothers, Killian-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-09
Updated: 2015-10-09
Packaged: 2018-04-25 13:23:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4962208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mouserat/pseuds/mouserat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Killian Jones's first words in the Underworld are a technicality.</p>
            </blockquote>





	beneath the depths

**Author's Note:**

> a little oneshot going off the theory that after emma is freed from the darkness, killian is dragged to the underworld as the price to pay for her sins as the dark one. full of jones brothers feels and a bit of captain swan fluff with a whole lot of killian (✿◠‿◠)

The darkness steals him away in the night, and it’s a sickening déjà vu that leaves tears in her eyes and bile in his throat. The difference is, that he is not bound by a selfish dagger, but rather by the cruel claws of fury and love (but then again, aren’t those one in the same?).

Just as soon as Emma is free of the darkness, it snatches Killian away, wrapping its tendrils around his forearm so tightly it burns. He can vaguely hear Emma’s distressed cries, can still taste the echo of her lips on his own, and he wonders if True Love’s Kiss will be their last.

The fury’s grip is unforgiving, just like the ocean he so adores, and the irony of comparing a demon to his first love is not lost on him. Killian is tossed into a boat made of bones and agony and screams, captained by a figure whose appearance flickers and morphs; first an animalistic creature, then a decrepit bearded elder, to a deathly angel, and back again. Killian opts to avert his gaze, instead focusing on the details of the depths he was unwillingly plunged into.

It is there he learns that the Styx circles the Underworld seven times, each curve just as deadly as the sins he practiced. As he is dragged further into this otherworld, his heart is burned by the flames of Phlegethon and he cannot tell whether it is Cocytus wailing or himself. Killian passes terror and gore and snapping jaws before he is thrown before the judges, who simply stare at him with impassive pools of black and mouths full of silence. Killian returns their blank expressions with a glare of the utmost defiance, pouring all his strength and resistance into one challenging scowl. 

And suddenly they are gone. Killian is alone, beneath a large, towering tree that looms over him just like his horrible misdeeds. He narrows his eyes and tenses, and waits for the attack to come. If there is anything Killian has learned in his three hundred years, it is that nothing, no one, is safe, especially in the quiet.

Two words break his solitude, and Killian wishes that he had been thrust into a deadly sword fight instead.

“Little brother.”

Killian freezes, and the feeling of cold ice traveling slowly down his spine numbs him to the uncomfortable humidity and sickly sweet smell of pomegranates. He wants to stop his head from turning, to stop himself from looking at a ghost he never thought he’d see in the flesh. To just turn and run. At the midst of the entrance of the Underworld, Killian had spotted an elm where false dreams clung to every leaf, and he idly wondered if that was the tree he was under now, because _no, no, it couldn’t be, not here —_

Killian is met with the familiar gaze that glitters just as bright as a newly polished sextant, filled with mirth and teasing and honor. Eyes that are so similar to his own, so similar to his father’s (the smile is his mother’s, the brown curls are his mother’s, the kindness, the bravery, the devotion are his _mother’s_ ) that he almost keels over, almost screams. It was as if nothing had changed; his suit was just as perfectly pressed and buttoned as the day they flew through the sky, hearts so full and the heavens right within their reach. In this moment, Dreamshade was just that — a dream, not an intoxicating poison that was the first culprit to steal love away. Everything is so familiar but so foreign, so comfortable yet so strange.

Killian’s hands are shaking, his response rolling off his tongue like a loaded die on a stained tavern table. He breathes it out like a reflex, before any shuddering sobs can rack his throat, before any terrified tears can leak down his skin from the sea in his eyes. The greeting is like coming home, and Killian could almost laugh at the irony of a pirate finding peace at the outer bounds of the ocean.

Killian Jones’s first words in the Underworld are technicality. 

“Younger brother.” 

 

* * *

 

Liam gestures grandly at their surroundings, sweeping his hand in a theatrical motion, and it is now that Killian understands where he gets his own flair for dramatics. 

“Here we are, at the ends of the earth, together,” Liam observes, a smile on his face. 

Killian does not know how to feel — whether to be suffocated by sorrow or bubbling with joy. The two brothers are lounging under the massive tree, gray and purple leaves fluttering in some nonexistent breeze. They are the perfect picture of relaxation, of family, but Killian just keeps thinking that surely, there must be a price to pay for this peace. His mind is unsettled, somehow simultaneously filled with emptiness and overwhelming worry that he doesn’t know how to verbalize.

“I said I would follow you,” is all he says.

Liam laughs. It’s his big, boasting laugh that could put an end to Killian’s tears far better than any uplifting speech could, and a knot forms in his throat at the sound.

“You never were one to break a promise,” his brother comments.

Killian thinks of Emma’s face as he was ripped away from her — how she lost yet another person to the darkness — and wonders if that’s still true.

“Just be glad the judges didn’t send you to Tartarus,” Liam snorts, giving Killian his trademark smirk with a bright gleam in his eyes.

“Tartarus?” Killian’s eyebrows furrow in confusion.

“The darkest abyss. It is said to be as far beneath the Underworld as the earth is beneath the sky,” Liam describes, winding his arms behind his head. The simple gesture fills Killian with an overwhelming joy that simultaneously evokes guilt and nostalgia, the memories of Liam’s tall tales and bedtime stories almost diminishing the ache to return to the living.

“Once you have fallen, you can never crawl out,” Liam continues. “Night is poured in it in three rows like a collar round the neck, while above it grows roots of the earth and of the unharvested sea.”

Killian is reminded of being wrapped in blankets as dangerous storms destroyed their childhood home, of finding his father’s belongings absent without even a note, of nicking plums from fruit vendors to survive, and of lowering his mother’s corpse into the ground. He thinks of all these young tribulations and how Liam would sooth his woes with just one gentle story or booming chuckle. Killian’s brother was his anchor, the one man who taught him to be a survivor, and he assumes that the reason the two of them reside below the depths is a cruel twist of fate.

“Liam,” Killian says, his voice strong and steady.

“Hm?”

“Am I dead?”

His brother swivels his head toward Killian, and he can swear Liam’s teeth have bits of pomegranate stuck in between them.

“I don’t know, brother. Are you?” 

 

* * *

  

Killian does not know how long he has been in the Underworld, and he cannot decide if that’s a problem.

Until now.

He is fisting his hand in the dark grass, glowering at his fingers, when a sparkling haze catches his eye. He rises to his feet, watching as the entrancing fog swirls and forms into the shadowy figure of a gorgeous princess with a cherry red jacket and a hopeful gaze. Their eyes meet and it’s like the past terrors never happened.

“Killian!” She breathes, full of relief. She is not really there, he knows this. Her presence is formed by some kind of magic, some kind of mystical spell to relay a message rather than a trick of the mind.

“Killian, are you okay?” She asks, worry coating her brow. He does not know how to respond.

“I — ”

Killian bites his bottom lip, licking over the indent as his gaze bores into hers. She’s back. His Swan, so full of light and love and selflessness, has finally remerged from the suffocating black that had trapped her so cruelly.

(He knew she could do it.)

(After all, she was bloody brilliant. Amazing.)

“Emma, are _you_ okay?” Killian inquires, concern for her trumping every possible emotion and circumstance.

She explains the chaos going through Storybrooke, and how it relates to the fury that separated them and why Killian is so far from her, from her love, from it all.

“Killian, I’m going to save you,” Emma vows, her jade eyes flashing full of determination and vigor and spunk (all the traits he adores), and he has to keep himself from grinning with fondness at her strength. “I’m going to save you, just like you helped save me.”

“I know,” he replies, his belief in her never wavering.

Her coral lips part, trembling, and she shakily promises, “I love you.”

Killian smiles softly, aching to reach over and tuck a golden curl behind her ear. “I know.”

She closes her eyes for a moment, tear drops clinging to her inky black lashes. She looks like she has taken a bath in the Styx, her expression full of self-loathing and hatred. Killian knows that look. He paints it on his own face each moment a dark memory kicks down the doors in his mind, and the sight of it dancing across her own beautiful features practically breaks his heart in two.

He extends his arm, yearning to cradle her freckled cheek in his ringed hand and stroke his thumb across her bottom lip. The image of her soft smile and the feeling of her leaning into his touch is enough to make him soar, to forget that a ghost is haunting (or blessing) him from behind.

His touch makes her disappear, and he can hardly say he’s surprised.  

 

* * *

 

 “Do you really believe she will come for you?”

The question is like a punch to the gut, and Killian does not turn around to face his brother, his hero. Instead, Killian roots himself to where Emma’s light had blessed him moments ago.

“Aye. I do,” he affirms.

There is a long silence, and the absence of Liam’s expected teasing stings more than the Crocodile’s sword on his wrist.

“You’ve changed so much, brother,” Liam remarks later. “For better or for worse, I cannot tell.”

Killian still does not turn around.

“Neither can I.” 

* * *

 

Liam and Killian stand in silence, neither looking at the other, for what seems like years. This is unfamiliar, strange, unwanted — Killian has never felt awkward or uncomfortable with Liam in this way, never in his life, but he supposes that “living” is no longer an adjective Killian can apply to himself.

Liam’s lips part. “I do not want you to get your hopes up.”

His response is a reflex. “She will succeed. She always does.”

Liam seems undeterred. “The Underworld is not gentle.”

“Neither is she.”

Liam purses his lips, pauses for a moment, and states, “Saying you will come back for someone is far different than actually putting your all into it.”

Killian’s gaze meets his brother’s, two oceans crashing together, and a fierce tempest ignites in his bones.

“You died in my arms,” Killian proclaims.

Liam is as inscrutable as the judges that studied Killian (hours? days? months?) earlier.

“Yes. That I did.”

“You died in my arms.” Killian’s voice was steadily getting louder as the hurricane inside him rages. “You bloody _died_ , and I couldn’t do anything to save your life!”

“I understand that you’re angry — ”

“I’m not angry!”

He wants to scream, to combust and confess his fear and doubt in himself, to sob in his brother’s arms and have Liam kiss the tips of ears like he used to when they were boys. But how could he, when admitting weakness in the Underworld was synonymous with admitting defeat?

Instead, he asks, “Where am I?”

(His voice is shaky and uneven, and Killian curses himself for appearing unhinged. _Bad form,_ he thinks, and then almost laughs at the ridiculousness of it all.)

“You are in the Vale of Mourning,” Liam informs him calmly. “The place doomed for those unhappy in love.”

“I am not unhappy in love,” Killian denies vehemently, anger sparking in his belly.

“Maybe so, but love has always brought you pain,” Liam states. “Love’s repercussions, its effects — it’s ruined you, brother.”

“No,” Killian whispers, his chest heaving dangerously. “No, it hasn’t.”

“Everyone you love has been ripped from you,” Liam insists, his eyes swirling into a dark storm. It was in this moment that his brother looked almost identical to his father, fury and betrayal and absolute _disappointment_ radiating off of him in waves even too violent for the sea. “Me, Milah, mum, dad —”

“No, stop it — ”

(It was too much.)

“Emma — ”

(It was all too much.)

_“Don’t say her name!”_ Killian shouts, his eyes screwed shut and lungs practically exploding with the agony of it all. He feels Acheron sloshing through his blood, seeping through his pores and lodging in his chest. He digs his shaking fingers violently in his hair, pulling and tugging at the demons in his mind. It is drastically different from the way Emma twirled his locks around her nimble fingers, dancing her hands across his scalp and combing the strands away from his forehead with care accompanied by a tender smile. 

“You are not Liam,” Killian shudders, the revelation feeling like another death in his life. “You are not my brother.”

The form in front of him begins to darken and melt, his brother’s admirable features dissolving and swirling into a darkness that had been all too present in Killian’s life, whether it was wrapping around his own heart or around the figure of a brave Swan. This monster was trying to drag him back into hatred, into destruction and wicked deeds, and Killian refuses to give in, refuses to cease fighting.

“Liam is in Elysium, Killian,” the darkness growls. The figure had evaporated, leaving behind a black mist that taunts relentlessly. “Your brother is one of our greatest heroes. But who are you? Who are you?”

_Just a pirate._

Killian digs his fingernails into his palm, watching as the gems in his rings catch a light that isn’t there (he stole them from the king’s quarters, the jewels of the realm) and how dull his hook looks in comparison.

_I am not ashamed,_ he retorts, sea shanties running through his blood and the beautiful sights of the far-off lands he explored tattooed on his eyelids.

_Just a lost boy._

He no longer cries for his parents, yet he still feels the emptiness. He misses his brother — his _real_ brother — deep in his bones. He can still hear Milah’s laugh sometimes, in the crash of the waves. But he is no longer lost, sailing through an endless ocean with a soul full of betrayal and revenge; he has found light, found love, found himself, and Neverland is now a distant memory.

_Not anymore,_ Killian hisses.

_Just a villain._

The last two syllables break him, and he screams when he falls to his knees. 

 

* * *

 

Killian welcomes death, but then slams the door in its face.

For he has seen a glimpse of red, a flash of gold, and a glint of emerald. The river Lethe is much more unappealing now that he feels the warmth of familiar and much missed light, the light that dug him out of the darkness in the first place.

She is here, and he chooses her again. 

 

* * *

 

“I love you,” he murmurs in the dead of night, their naked bodies tangled in each others’ limbs and soft bedsheets. Her hair smells of lavender and her touch tattoos constellations on his skin, the light of her almost bursting throughout the dim room. They are helplessly intertwined, irrevocably magnetic, and a deep contentment settles in Killian’s bones.

Her soft lips brush over his, the gentle presence of her enough to ease his sorrow, and for the millionth time he thanks every deity there is that she made her way back to him (he even thanks Hades himself).

“I know.”

 


End file.
